


Five Sentences

by Blossomwitch



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Challenge Response, Ficlet Collection, Friendship/Love, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-03-31 19:52:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 3,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3990616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blossomwitch/pseuds/Blossomwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of fics written for the 5sentence fics challenge community on LJ. Featuring Gojyo and Hakkai, both as friendship and yaoi. Each fic is five sentences long and takes a snapshot of a different look at their relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rules: Each fic responds to a prompt and has to be exactly five sentences long, irregardless of word count. 
> 
> I enjoy twisting a fic to meet a certain structure or word requirement; this challenge was love at first sight, and I found it surprisingly difficult. Originally published 5/29/09.

_Prompt #8--No Retreat_  
  
He never had a chance.  
  
When he awoke, he was already in the other's bed, sheets rubbing unfamiliar cologne onto his skin, cigarette smoke tangling in his hair, a new laundry detergent in his clothes.  
  
When he ate, the food tasted different; when he spoke, he was always answered; when he looked up, eyes met his, then looked away.   
  
Perhaps he could have retreated anyway, tried to bow out even though the connections had already been forged while he slept. But he looked up, and those other eyes looked away, and he knew it was not yet time to die. 


	2. Chapter 2

Prompt #2--Red Tape  
  
"Let me see if I have this right... basically you're allowed to be alive, but under a different name so that they can pretend you're dead, and you're allowed to do whatever the hell you want, but only because Sanzo volunteered to be your make believe warden and he won't make you do anything."  
  
"You've got it."  
  
"And this is their idea of divine wisdom?"  
  
"Are you complaining about the ruling?"  
  
"...You don't play fair."


	3. Chapter 3

Prompt #21--A matter of luck  
  
Hakkai claimed to have luck in cards, an instinctive sense of how the game was flowing that, sadly, utterly failed him in day to day life.   
  
Gojyo thought he cheated.  
  
He thought that because Hakkai always cheated. Arriving in Gojyo's life so screwed up and broken that Gojyo couldn't turn away from his level of need, turning up on the wrong side of all Gojyo's walls before Gojyo had even sensed possible danger, all with that disarming smile and shrug that lulled you to complacency--these were all unfair tactics.  
  
When Gojyo tried pointing this out to Hakkai, however, Hakkai was insistent that he didn't cheat, he had just stumbled on his one and only stroke of luck in real life, but Gojyo liked to think of it as Hakkai having cheated anyway. 


	4. Chapter 4

Prompt #16--Evergreen  
  
Green was Hakkai's color--the green of his eyes, the green of his wardrobe, the green of the youkai vines tattooing themselves across his skin. To Gojyo, the repetition of this theme was proof that no matter how ardently Hakkai might try to embrace death and darkness, and stubbornly plant himself in their shadow, his was a soul that was meant to thrive.   
  
Red was just as undeniably Gojyo's color, but he struggled to make out its meaning. Blood, yes, but it had been pointed out to him that blood was not the only red thing in this world. Blood, flowers, fire, apples... there was no theme amongst all these things. So it wasn't until Gojyo decided that red was the opposite of green, its balance and counterbalance, that he felt he had found his path again. 


	5. Chapter 5

Prompt #3--Shot Down  
  
Hakkai didn't want to go to a bar, go look for women, go out to eat, play poker, take a walk, or get into trouble wrecking the crops of the farmer who had made such acidic comments about a demon moving into the village.   
  
"Weren't you going somewhere?" Hakkai asked vaguely, turning the page of his book.   
  
Gojyo looked at him grumpily. _No--because for some stupid reason, it's better to stay here with you and go stir-crazy than it is to go to a bar, go look for women, go to eat, play poker..._  
  
"...Are you sure you don't want to go get a drink?"


	6. Chapter 6

Prompt #14--Riding the rail  
  
Even though it was Gojyo's house that Hakkai moved into, Gojyo still felt as though he was the one making a move, and Hakkai was the one who had been home all along. Despite having lived in the same place for years, Gojyo felt like he had been constantly on the run, a vagabond riding the rails and spending a night here and a night there before moving on, never going home because there was no such thing.   
  
Until Hakkai moved in--and started planting things in the garden and hanging things on the walls, started stocking and organizing the kitchen cupboards and drawers. Until Gojyo was expected to let someone know when he'd be home, expected to keep his mess out of someone's way, expected to wake someone up at any time of night, for any reason, even if there was no reason.   
  
There was a certain freedom to being alone, being in motion--but Gojyo gladly relinquished the moment he realized he was home.   
  



	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This wound up more "enter the dragon" than "exit the dragon," but it's what came to my mind when I saw the prompt, so I say it counts. ^^)

Prompt #23--Exit the Dragon  
  
"You know... normal people bring home stray _dogs_."  
  
"First, since when were you under the impression I was normal, and second, and least I didn't lie and claim it followed me home all on its own."  
  
"I don't even know what this thing _is_ , Hakkai, and don't interrupt me, I know you say it's a dragon but if it is then it's the smallest damn dragon I ever... well... I guess he is kinda cute, but he's still way too small to be a... huh."  
  
"I promise to take care of it and feed it and walk it and pretty pretty please can I keep it?"  
  
"...You have no idea how seriously disturbed I am right now."


	8. Chapter 8

Prompt #6--Call of the Wild  
  
Hakkai was good at controlling his expressions. But Gojyo was good at interpreting him. There were those who accused Gojyo of ignoring Hakkai's complexities, of blindly embracing him and ignoring everything he didn't want to see, but even if it seemed that way from the outside Gojyo missed nothing, and forgot nothing. He knew that Hakkai carried a great destructive force inside him, and that it could be turned inwards or outwards with equal ease, and Gojyo kept an eye out for the minute changes of expression that signaled that the darkness was rising.   
  
And then, he would do whatever he needed to--make a series of bad jokes, have a catastrophe that Hakkai just _had_ to help him with, stay up with him all night, sometimes just plant himself between Hakkai and his intended victim--to make it subside, and Hakkai knew Gojyo was managing him but no one else noticed, still thinking him blind to Hakkai's dark side. 


	9. Chapter 9

Prompt #10--Take the fall  
  
Falling in love, Gojyo had learned, was an act of courage. You only fell when you stopped resisting it, and you only stopped resisting it when... well... when you got up the guts and just stopped. When the possible disaster became worth the possible reward.  
  
When the sight of the person next to you, reading quietly on the couch, became a visualization that you could meditate on for hours. And it became his voice, instead of your own, that whispered quietly and insistently in your mind, telling you, _take the fall_. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (At this point in the writing I noticed Gojyo was doing most of the narrating, so I tried for Hakkai deliberately with the next prompt.
> 
> The next thing I noticed is that Hakkai is wordy. O.o)

Prompt #24--Blotting Paper  
  
Press the paper against ink and it carries away an afterimage of what was written there, thick at points and thin at others, a half-drawn picture from which the whole can only be deciphered with patience and a bit of luck.   
  
First image: the bar, the smoke, the laughter that is too loud and harsh, eyes keeping watch on the corners and exits and a smile that's a little sour, but you blame that on intoxication.   
  
Another image: the same slightly dented smile, the shakujo out, the tough-guy act still on, boasting with our friends and making stupid mistakes in your rush to save them; your anger when you see someone weaker than you being hurt, your same loud and harsh laughter when you yourself are hurt, and the way you know the exact moment I'm going to collapse and arrive the exact moment before.   
  
Another, that only Jien and I have seen: too quiet, unconsciously touching your scars, confessing without words the secret fear that you are useless, that nothing you can give me will ever be enough to make me stay with someone as pathetic as you, and I can never manage to snap you out of it or make you stop believing it; all I can do is feed you and put you to bed, and hope it's gone in the morning.   
  
And one more: that first image of your face in the rain, eyes wide as you tried to save me, the halfway remembered feeling of your arms lifting me off the ground; this memory all tied up with the way your arms feel around me now, touching me much too often, and you never bother to hide it because you think I don't know--you've never noticed that I, too, touch you more than is strictly necessary. 


	11. Chapter 11

Prompt #5--Hands Are Tied  
  
As a best friend you had certain duties and obligations that even Gojyo, who had never really had a best friend before, knew were implicit. You had to stand up for your buddy when someone was treating him badly, listen to him when he needed to talk, cheer him up when he was feeling low.   
  
And you had to stand with your hands tied behind your back, biting your tongue as hard as you could, when he got into a relationship you knew was bad news--because he'd already made his choice, and hearing what you thought about it would only strain your friendship. You got one shot to deliver the "I'm his best friend and if you hurt him I'll beat you into a pulp" speech, and then you had to sit down, shut up, and try not to glare.   
  
And when you realized (too late) that you could do everything Hakkai's new boyfriend was doing a hell of a lot better--well, more than ever that was the time to keep your silence. 


	12. Chapter 12

Prompt #20--Stretching the Truth  
  
“We could say we were attacked by a party of demonic assassins.”  
  
“That works for flushed and sweaty, but you look _way_ too pleased with yourself to have been killing demons.”  
  
“I happen to enjoy killing demons.”  
  
“How about this, Hakkai: we go back and admit that we’re late because we were having sex, and what’s more, we say we are completely unashamed of making them wait for us and that if either of them ever got laid they’d understand.”  
  
“… _Or_ we could say we were caught in a stampede.”


	13. Chapter 13

Prompt #9--Stitch in Time  
  
There were moments in your past that you knew you would change in an instant if you could; things you fantasized about for hours and hours on end, thinking what might have gone differently, how you might have stopped it from happening if only, if only, if only...  
  
But there were things in your past that you knew you couldn't change; things that no matter how much you thought about it, you couldn't imagine them not happening, couldn't imagine what you would be like today if they hadn't.   
  
Then you realize quite clearly one day, while you're watching him wash dishes or comb his hair or some other stupid thing, that if it wasn't for all these things in your past you never would have met him--or, more likely, you would have met him, but you wouldn't have noticed.  
  
There are things you have now that you wouldn't trade for the world.   
  
And the second realization hits--that even if you could go back in time, even after all those wistful fantasies, agonized _if only_ s--after all that, you wouldn’t make any changes. 


	14. Chapter 14

Prompt #25--Draw the Line  
  
Hakkai tried, numerous times, before he realized this was a battle he couldn’t help but lose.   
  
He designated certain topics not to be spoken of; Gojyo never said so much as a word concerning them, but rather revealed his own traumas and secret wonderings so completely and trustingly that Hakkai couldn’t help but yearn to do the same. Hakkai made rules about privacy and orderliness in the house, and Gojyo broke them in such a haphazard and endearing way that it was often the next day before Hakkai realized they’d been broken. He made silent resolutions about the danger of getting too close to someone again, and it was as if Gojyo had heard Hakkai’s thoughts and challenged himself to get through these unspoken barriers, also.   
  
Eventually, Hakkai was forced to concede: to acknowledge that there was no line he could draw that Gojyo would not walk all over, no way for him to keep Gojyo from getting at something he was determined to have. 


	15. Chapter 15

Prompt #22--Major Renovation  
  
The shack Gojyo lived in had never been in pristine condition, and after he became the only occupant it fell into greater and greater disrepair. Gojyo didn’t quite realize how bad it was getting until he found himself embarrassed to take the unnamed invalid he’d found back to his place to heal. He thought about it a little, got some vague, half-formed ideas, but it wasn’t until Hakkai moved in permanently that those ideas took root and he began to do some serious home improvement.   
  
Hakkai helped with all the projects but made few suggestions; it wasn’t until Goku innocently commented one day that the place was starting to look like Hakkai that Gojyo realized how much everything he’d done reflected Hakkai’s preferences. And then he wasn’t certain if Hakkai had subtly directed him without his noticing, or if he had done it all on his own, subconsciously bending over backwards in his efforts to make Hakkai want to stay. 


	16. Chapter 16

Prompt #15--In Good Standing  
  
The oddest things started happening to Gojyo after Hakkai moved in.   
  
People other than girls and fellow gambles said hello to him on the street; the gossiping old ladies at the open air markets plied him with little treats, trying to get tidbits of news about the new young man who was so polite and so good-looking; one of the local girls showed up at his house during daylight--a thing that had never before happened--because Hakkai had invited her over to teach her how to cook a certain dish.   
  
When they got invited to a neighbor’s end-of-summer garden party, Gojyo realized that Hakkai was turning them into respectable members of the neighborhood, and he didn’t know whether he was amused or annoyed. Having always been an outcast because of his heritage, Gojyo liked to beat people to the punch and declare himself uninterested in being a part of any group--but he saw how Hakkai thrived on it, and realized how much Hakkai needed to believe he could still live normally if he chose. And so Gojyo gossiped with the old ladies, and showed up at the parties, and tried not to feel trapped. 


	17. Chapter 17

  
Prompt #13--Deep Water  
  
Gojyo was afraid of deep water. Considering his ancestry, this was the cause of continual teasing from Goku and snide remarks from Sanzo--to which Gojyo snarled back that he wasn’t afraid, he just didn’t like detracting from his good looks by getting his skin all wrinkled and pruney.   
  
Hakkai--who had seen Gojyo battle with the mere act of getting into the shower, haunted by childhood memories of being submerged in the tub as punishment for imagined crimes--didn’t tease, and tried to provide timely distractions to keep the others’ teasing from getting out of control. But one night when they stayed at a hotel with a pool, Hakkai invited Gojyo for a midnight swim with a suggestiveness to his tone that was impossible to miss. And when Gojyo discovered he’d been in the deep end for fifteen minutes without realizing it he swore, dunked Hakkai, smiled, and then continued with what he had been doing.   
  



	18. Chapter 18

#17--Keeping In Touch  
  
‘I want to invite Sanzo and Goku home for dinner, is that alright with you?’  
  
‘Are they going to leave early enough that you and I can do naughty things to each other?’  
  
‘Do you really have to write things like that down, these messages could be intercepted (and yes, I’ll make sure of it)’  
  
‘Well in that case bring’em along, and hell yes I have to write stuff like that down because I get to spend the next few hours imagining you blushing and thinking about it--which, incidentally, is a good jumping-off point for a fantasy I could spin you…’  
  
‘We really shouldn’t abuse the privilege--which is my way of saying, if you ever use Hakuryuu to send erotica to me I will forbid him to ever carry notes from you again.’


	19. Chapter 19

Prompt #19--On the Radio  
  
Gojyo liked to dance, and he was the only member of the Sanzo party who liked to. Sanzo was too uptight, Hakkai too dignified, and Goku too rambunctious--he could jump around a lot, but it wasn’t really dancing. So Gojyo confined his proclivity to nights when they stopped in towns large enough to have a couple of clubs he would disappear into, coming back a few hours before the rest of them woke up for the day.   
  
One night, Goku was awakened by the muffled sound of music coming from the room next door; curious, he went and peered through a crack in the wall and saw a small portable radio sitting on a bed playing cheesy music while Hakkai taught Gojyo not the kind of dancing you did at clubs, but the kind you saw in old fashioned movies, except that both of them tripping over each other‘s feet and laughing. Their smiles were more genuine than the ones daylight showed, and so Goku crept back to his bed and didn‘t mention it the next day, and made a point of going back to sleep every time the soft music came filtering into his room.


	20. Chapter 20

Prompt #1--Flip side  
  
“You know what I think?” Sanzo said to Gojyo one day, suddenly fed up with the situation. “I think these hyperactive, over-the-top displays of heterosexuality that you consistently make us all witness are a sign that you are deeply, deeply insecure with either your own sexuality or Hakkai’s--or both, for that matter. Have you got the neighbors convinced you’re not dating yet? Have you got yourself convinced?”  
  
Gojyo did not respond. 


	21. Chapter 21

Prompt #4: Calling me Home  
  
It was strange, that night--later I tried to retrace my steps, tried to figure out how I had gotten from the scene of the carnage to Gojyo’s doorstep while holding my guts in my hands, but it was too long a distance to have traveled in that condition and I could never, no matter how much I tried, figure out _how_.  
  
 _Why_ was easier, even if it didn’t make sense. I have always felt, from the very moment I laid eyes on Gojyo, that I knew him from somewhere--a feeling too strong to dismiss even though I know how impossible it is. And that night, I felt very strongly that I was following something, being called somewhere, that the path I followed was not random but leading me to a very definite point.   
  
And considering what’s happened since, maybe it’s not so unbelievable; maybe it was some sort of prescience, a visitation from Hakkai to Gonou, that made me feel on that night that I was stumbling towards home. 


	22. Chapter 22

Prompt #7--Walking on the Sun  
  
It was hot--too hot for errands, too hot for either of them to want to even set foot outside the house, the kind of day when the soles of your shoes could stick to the road.   
  
At noon, Gojyo dropped a rapidly melting ice cube down the back of Hakkai’s shirt; Hakkai didn’t even flinch, just thanked Gojyo for helping him cool off, and Gojyo slouched off, bored and displeased that he hadn’t been able to start some mischief.   
  
At one o’clock Gojyo came back from the bathroom, sat down without looking, and found himself sitting on several trays’ worth of rapidly melting ice cubes.   
  
By three o’clock, they were both soaked to the skin and halfway through inventing a game that involved bonus points for attacks that utilized more than one method of delivery and fouls for the use of garden hoses.   
  
By seven o’clock, every pot, pan, and jar in the house had been used to carry and throw water, and they were cleaning up while arguing over who had won, what the official rules should be, and the relative merits and perils of teaching Goku how to play--and the misery of the heat had been completely forgotten. 


	23. Chapter 23

Prompt #13--The Big Blue  
  
“Erm,” Hakkai said.  
  
Goku pondered the scene before them, his head coked sideways. “Hey Hakkai, I didn’t know we were headed to the ocean… can we go swimming?”  
  
Sanzo hadn’t said anything yet, but the cigarette in his hand had burned to the filter without his noticing. Gojyo ducked down as far as he could in the backseat, intending to be out of shooting/smacking/general flailing range when Sanzo’s shock wore off.   
  
“Well,” Hakkai said with a shrug, “we’ve already been considerably delayed, so I suppose stopping for a swim couldn’t hurt… and then, I’ll just borrow a map from someone and figure out where we are, and we’ll be on the road again in no time…”


	24. Chapter 24

Prompt #11--Lonely at the Top  
  
“It’s lonely at the top,” Hakkai remarked.  
  
“It’s lonely when you’re an asshole who pushes everyone away,” Gojyo corrected, his tone almost a snarl. “You don’t have to go there every single day just to keep him company--he hasn’t earned it, he doesn’t need it, and you shouldn’t treat him like he doesn’t know any better.”  
  
Hakkai, his hand on the doorknob, paused and looked over his shoulder with a mild frown and asked, “Are you jealous?”  
  
He had expected a spirited denial--what he got was silence, hunched shoulders, and a moody glare directed at the floor. Hakkai slowly took his hand away from the doorknob. 


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I freely admit to rampant abuse of semicolons in the following five sentences. I saved this prompt for the end of the collection because I had so much I wanted to say about it, making semicolons my most precious minions if I was going to make the five sentence requirement.)

Prompt #18--Absence of Fear  
  
Most people don’t understand the way I relate to others, like the girls at the bars or hanging around the poker tables; most people don’t understand that physical affection is so easy for me to give, much easier than anything else. But you--you have known from the first that you are an exception to the rule, and you don’t resent that I’ve never reached for you the way I reach for everyone else, because you understand why I don’t.  
  
Days and months and years will go by, and I will not kiss you; we will live side by side, gradually come to own more and more pieces of each other, and I will not kiss you; walls will come down, new ones will spring up, barriers will be overcome, and I will not kiss you. It doesn’t matter whether it’s you navigating the rocky minefield of my childhood, not knowing what looks or words will cause a detonation, or if it’s me cutting through the scar tissue she left behind, naming all your fears to you and proving that you don’t scare me--the slow process of taming and gentling each other will go on, two steps forward and one step back, and I don’t care how long it takes. On the day I step too close to you and see a complete absence of fear in your eyes; on the day I step too close to you and feel an answering lack of fear in my own chest; on that day, I will kiss you, and your eyes will close and your arms will encircle me, and all this waiting will have been worth if. 


End file.
